Fabrication of polymer optical waveguides for the 1.5-m band using focused proton beam

Miura, Kenta*; Machida, Yuki*; Uehara, Masato*; Kiryu, Hiromu*; Ozawa, Yusuke*; Sasaki, Tomoyuki*; Hanaizumi, Osamu*; Sato, Takahiro; Ishii, Yasuyuki; Koka, Masashi; Takano, Katsuyoshi*; Okubo, Takeru; Yamazaki, Akiyoshi; Kada, Wataru; Yokoyama, Akihito; Kamiya, Tomihiro; Nishikawa, Hiroyuki*

Proton beam writing (PBW) is an attractive technique for next-generation micro-fabrication. We study the fabrication of optical waveguides of polymer materials using PBW. In this study, the optical waveguides of photorefractive polysilane "GLASSIA" was fabricated. The samples for the waveguides were prepared as follows; (1) An under-cladding layer of SiO having a thickness of 15 m was deposited on a Si substrate using radio-frequency sputtering. (2) A polysilane layer having a thickness of 10 m was spin-coated onto the SiO layer as a core layer. Optical waveguides were drawn by scanning a 1.7 MeV focused proton beam with 1 m size and beam current of 50 pA which was produced by a submicron focused ion beam system connected with the 3 MV single-ended accelerator at JAEA. The drawing was carried out on the dose of 100, 200, 300 nC/mm each. After the drawing, the sample surfaces were observed using an optical microscope and AFM. The observation result showed that the refractive index was changed and the cores of the waveguides were formed. We will report the details of above observation results in the conference. The change ratio of the refraction index will also be reported on the basis of the obtained result by inserting light ( = 1.55 m) into the waveguide structure through a single-mode fiber.